Throughout his tenure as a Sox owner, jerry Reinsdorf has always cried poor. So when you think of it, if I owned a major league franchise on a limited budget, and I still wanted to suceed, would there be a more important position in my organization that the General Manager? A General Manager who can build and SUSTAIN a good farm system and ine who at least doesn't contiuosly get pants every time he makes a trade. If you are not going to spend a lot of money on players, wouldn't it be at least worth your while to go out and get the best general manager possible?

With that said, it amazes me how JR on three seperate occasions hired general managers with little or no experience at critical junctures in the team's history:

Let's start with the Ken Harrelson debacle. In this case, a sound baseball man in Roland Hemond was brushed aside for a broadcaster who featured himself in a media campaign entitled "The Hawk Wants You!" The result of Harrelson's efforts was a team that traded guys like Doug Drabek and Bobby Bonilla for table scraps, a gutted farm system and four of the worst years of Sox baseball I've ever seen (1986-89).

Then there was Ron Schueler who was hired after Reinsdorf fired Larry Himes. You see, Larry was a terrible people person who obviously didn't get along with the chairman. But that notwithstanding, he built, through a series of first round picks, a great Sox team that contended in the early 90s. But Larry was point B guy and JR wanted a point C guy. Enter Ron Schueler who was a scout with the A's at the time. The first thing that Schu did was facilitate the departure of Jeff Torborg to the Muts (with no compensation in return), traded Bob Wickman for Steve Sax, wasted our time with Corey Snyder and presided over the White Flag Trade. Some consider the WFT as a success, but remember, the linch pin in the deal supposedly was Mike Caruso who turned out to be a miserable failure.

Now I really thought that Schu, late in his career as a GM, got a lot better at the position and I wish that he had stayed on because............

After Schu, Kenny was hired, beating out a more experienced Danny Evans, who is now the GM of the division leading Dodgers. Meanwhile, KW has made one bad move after another and has look very foolish with both his media comments and his constant meddling in the clubhouse.

In the end, I think that your typical corporation puts more thought in hiring their summer mailroom intern than JR puts into his general manager selections.

soxtalker

07-13-2002, 04:05 PM

How should JR make an informed choice of GM?

He could, of course, look for people who have already been successful GM's elsewhere. However, they must have had some experience before that. So, if you are trying to pick someone who you think will be a successful GM, what sort of background do you look for? It could be experience as an Asst. GM in another successful organization. (An example of the latter might be Kim Ng, who worked with Cashman of the Yankees for several years.) However, I must confess that I don't know what the backgrounds are of successful GM's on other clubs (e.g., Cashman).